Completed new stainless steel rolling ball sculpture
Behold, my internet buds, a photo of a sculpture that I just completed. Pretty cool, eh? It uses one-inch marbles. Most of it is 1/8" rod, but there is some perforated stainless on there as you can see, and the pyramid that forms the frame is something like 3/16" or 3/8". There is a hand-operated starting gate, one spiral, a loop-the-loop, and there are actually two tracks, the initial track being split into two using a tipper-style splitter.
This is obviously a big change from the pieces I was doing formerly that were of copper wire. It has taken a lot of practice to get my welding skills together well enough to make a piece of this quality. I am also working on a rather massively-sized one that mounts to a wall and has an electric motor that drives a chain lift so the marbles are automatically carried back up to the top. It's about three feet wide and four feet tall. It's huge. It's awesome. It will be a while yet before it is done. I've been working on it since January. I took a little break, though, and did this one so that I'd have something to show what my new work looks like. This is the direction I've been wanting to go in since I started. I began with copper because I didn't have a welder and I wasn't even really sure I could build something like this. Obviously, I've taken care of those problems now.
This is the type of work that I would like to continue doing. While copper is certainly gorgeous, it is much easier to do larger works in steel for the simply rigidity and durability of the material itself. You can only make something so large with copper, or else you end up using tons of supports just to keep it from folding over on itself. Plus, I simply enjoy welding. I'd do it all day every day if I were allowed, and for a while at the machine shop I was doing just that, though my welding skills haven't been needed at all lately, which is a disappointment. I'm currently looking for other work, as I simply need to be making more to get the bills paid, though the shop is good to me. I would eventually like to transition to doing art full time, crazy as that sounds in this economy. I am studying up on how to make this self-employment thing work and how to be a business person as opposed to simply someone who makes art in his spare time and occasionally sells it.
In other awesome news, I have purchased a for-real decent video camera and will have a good quality video of this one to post in the near future, which should be much more fun for everyone than just the static pic. I will be posting the video here and on my new art website when I have it completed.
This is obviously a big change from the pieces I was doing formerly that were of copper wire. It has taken a lot of practice to get my welding skills together well enough to make a piece of this quality. I am also working on a rather massively-sized one that mounts to a wall and has an electric motor that drives a chain lift so the marbles are automatically carried back up to the top. It's about three feet wide and four feet tall. It's huge. It's awesome. It will be a while yet before it is done. I've been working on it since January. I took a little break, though, and did this one so that I'd have something to show what my new work looks like. This is the direction I've been wanting to go in since I started. I began with copper because I didn't have a welder and I wasn't even really sure I could build something like this. Obviously, I've taken care of those problems now.
This is the type of work that I would like to continue doing. While copper is certainly gorgeous, it is much easier to do larger works in steel for the simply rigidity and durability of the material itself. You can only make something so large with copper, or else you end up using tons of supports just to keep it from folding over on itself. Plus, I simply enjoy welding. I'd do it all day every day if I were allowed, and for a while at the machine shop I was doing just that, though my welding skills haven't been needed at all lately, which is a disappointment. I'm currently looking for other work, as I simply need to be making more to get the bills paid, though the shop is good to me. I would eventually like to transition to doing art full time, crazy as that sounds in this economy. I am studying up on how to make this self-employment thing work and how to be a business person as opposed to simply someone who makes art in his spare time and occasionally sells it.
In other awesome news, I have purchased a for-real decent video camera and will have a good quality video of this one to post in the near future, which should be much more fun for everyone than just the static pic. I will be posting the video here and on my new art website when I have it completed.